Persistent refereeing bias in favour of you know who

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·15 de novembro de 2025

Persistent refereeing bias in favour of you know who

Over at Ibrox, Sporting Director Kevin Thelwell has made his continuing dissatisfaction with Scottish refereeing clear in the aftermath of the theRangers’ Premier Sports Cup semi-final defeat to Celtic…

Kevin Thelwell, Sporting Director of theRangers is seen during the Premier League match between Falkirk and theRangers at Falkirk Stadium on October 04, 2025. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

“We want to have another conversation with the SFA,” Thelwell said, as reported by the BBC Kevin Thelwell says Rangers seek ‘greater consistency & quality of refereeing’ – BBC Sport.

Vídeos OneFootball

“We’ve been doing some analysis of our own over a much wider period and perhaps want to talk to them again about some of that detail for one reason and one reason only.

“We want greater consistency, we want a greater quality and standard of refereeing and we want the focus to be on the football and not on the decisions.”

Thelwell highlighted the Auston Trusty incident as a major grievance.

“It’s well known that we were disappointed with some of the consistencies of the refereeing on that day… we still fundamentally disagree with some of the points that were made and in particular the Auston Trusty incident. It’s clear from our side that it’s a red card.

“We all feel like it’s a dangerous precedent to be setting to say that striking somebody on the head is nothing short of a red card.”

The quotes landed predictably — enthusiastically among a support who felt wronged at Hampden and keen to extend the discourse around refereeing bias.

But the wider question is this. Are Thelwell’s public pronouncements fair? Or are they shaped by pressure from a support struggling to adjust to something approaching refereeing parity?

Celtic analyst Alan Morrison, formerly of Celtic By Numbers and now a contributor to The Huddle Breakdown — has argued, with data rather than rhetoric, that officiating in the SPFL had showed persistent bias in favour of theRangers.

The boot of Auston Trusty of Celtic catches Jack Butland of theRangers in the head, leading to a yellow card during the Premier Sports Cup Semi Final match between Celtic and theRangers at Hampden Park on November 02, 2025. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

You can read Alan’s informative article here and I’d also encourage you, whichever team you support, to read some of the historical articles on The Huddle Breakdown site, at the end of the linked article, they too are illuminating.

Alan openly states his own bias, therefore, he deliberately brought in an external, neutral professional referee, The Yorkshire Whistler, to audit major decisions involving both Glasgow clubs. The findings came as a shock even to Alan. As he wrote.

“Given the predictable and, frankly, tiresome debating of refereeing decisions post-derby matches, I decided in 2021 to “eat my own dog food”. That is, to apply some data-driven rigour to the question rather than bitch and moan from the sidelines. My starting hypothesis was that there would be no significant differences in how refereeing performances impact Celtic and The Rangers. How wrong I was.”

Using publicly available data, Alan identified what he described as “patterns of assistance,” a term, strangely, the fans of the Ibrox club have recently adopted. Oh, the irony.

Alan’s analysis found that “Opponents of The Rangers needed to enter their penalty box 372 times before a penalty was awarded, whilst the league average was 147 (142 times per penalty against Celtic).”

He continued that “Whilst The Rangers gained a penalty every 147 forays into the opposition box, Celtic needed 203.”

Morrison also found that “The expected points gained by The Rangers’ penalties were 2.95 times more beneficial than those awarded to Celtic,” and that “The Rangers’ average time of penalty award was the 48th minute, but 59th for Celtic.”

He noted that “The Rangers’ average time of penalty concession was the 67th minute, but the 45th for Celtic,” and that “In the period under analysis, The Rangers’ opponents were given 12 more red cards than the Ibrox club. Celtic’s opponents received four more.”

He further concluded that “When combining the expected points impact of both penalties and red cards… awards favouring The Rangers were over three times more beneficial than those favouring Celtic,” and that “Based on the independent Yorkshire Whistler incident review, The Rangers benefited from an estimated 13 points over three seasons due to incorrect calls.”

Morrison emphasises that these outcomes were statistically significant. “A statistically significant Z-score indicates that a data point is far enough away from the mean to be unlikely to be caused by random chance. In English: there was something fishy afoot.”

This was the refereeing environment theRangers were accustomed to, one in which, according to the analysis, officiating outcomes disproportionately favoured their club.

The transition from Crawford Allan to Willie Collum as Head of Refereeing in 2024 marked a major structural shift.

Morrison describes Collum as “Consistently not great as a referee,” but “refreshingly innovative as the head of service.”

Two of Collum’s reforms stand out, a monthly public VAR review show dissecting contentious decisions with video and audio, and a weekly Key Match Incident report evaluating referee correctness.

The impact was quantifiable. Morrison notes. “The error rate amongst those decisions fell dramatically to 13% compared to an astonishing 32% in 2021-22.” And crucially. “It is not obvious that the patterns of assistance persist.”

His conclusion was that “ALL clubs now seem to be affected by poor refereeing performances, more or less equally, or at least within the boundaries of normal variance. This is all we Celtic fans ever asked for.”

In other words, the data indicates the return of something that had been missing for years — parity.

This brings us back to Thelwell. If evidence from Alan’s independent-audited analysis shows the era of lopsided refereeing benefits is over, what is Thelwell really responding to?

Is it genuine systemic unfairness? There is no data to support this.

Or is it pressure from a support unaccustomed to equality? This seems far more plausible.

For a fanbase conditioned over several seasons to outcomes which statistical analysis suggests were consistently favourable, even-handed officiating can feel like punishment. Decisions that would previously have skewed their way now fall into a more neutral range — and neutrality, to those used to advantage, feels like victimisation.

And in the background, Thelwell himself sits under growing scrutiny, a record net transfer spend, poor integration of new signings, deteriorating performances, and open questions about ownership transparency. Pointing at referees may simply be the cheapest political capital available.

The evidence from Alan Morrison and the Yorkshire Whistler suggests Scottish refereeing is still inconsistent, still of poor quality overall, but finally not systemically weighted in favour of any single club.

So, are Thelwell’s comments fair? Or are they a case of playing to the gallery, reinforcing a grievance narrative that collapses under statistical scrutiny?

For many observers, what the theRangers are experiencing now isn’t bias. It’s simply the first genuine levelling of the playing field, which feels, from Ibrox, like a hostile act.

Niall J

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